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Quickly, the main pearl buyer raises his offer to fifteen hundred pesos, but it is too late Kino leaves.īack in their brush houses, the neighbors discuss the events. The pearl buyers, however, have misjudged their client: Kino announces that he will go to the capital and sell the pearl. The third buyer offers five hundred pesos. The second buyer maintains that the pearl will "die" in a few months. One will make no offer at all the pearl is a monstrosity. When the other three pearl buyers arrive, they carry through with their pre-arranged, assigned roles. They are puzzled in contrast, the pearl buyer cannot keep his eyes off the pearl. While they are waiting for the other buyers, the neighbors discuss the offer. Kino knows that he is being cheated meanwhile, the pearl buyer sends for the other buyers to confirm his offer. He maintains that the pearl is too big - the pearl is a curiosity that no one will buy. Then the buyer offers a very small sum, a thousand pesos, for the Pearl of the World. The pearl buyer looks casually at the pearl and shows no expression on his face, yet his hands, hidden behind him, are trembling. When Kino arrives with the pearl, his neighbors wait just within hearing distance, outside the office. The mere fact that this pearl buyer is playing a game in which a coin disappears, a game used at cheap carnivals to cheat innocent bystanders, sets the tone for the entire pearl-buying operation. One of the pearl buyers, a fatherly, jovial man, sits in his office playing a disappearing trick with coins while he waits for Kino. The news of Kino's impending arrival in town has already reached the pearl buyers, along with reports on the loveliness of the pearl. This view of the priest, of course, shows him to be simply a tool of the wealthy pearl buyers he is not concerned at all with the social welfare of his parishioners. According to the priest, the failure was "a punishment on those who tried to leave their station." The priest made it clear that God intends the peons to remain in their stations in life, and if someone tries to rise above their station, it is an invitation for disaster. Kino, of course, has heard the story already the priest, the Father, tells it every year. They then abandoned the idea and returned to selling their pearls to the pearl buyers. The first man failed to return they sent another with their collected pearls and he too failed to return. In the processional, Juan Tomás walks beside Kino and reminds Kino of the old story of how years ago the "old ones" thought of a way to outwit the pearl buyers by sending one of their own to the large town to sell their collected pearls. Today, they go in a triumphant mood, fully aware of the treasure they have that will bring them wealth and respect. Yesterday, they walked in the same procession to see the doctor, and they were defeated and turned away. Here, we have the second of several processional scenes. Kino and Juana dress themselves and Coyotito in their best clothes and begin the trip to the pearl buyers, followed by all of the rest of the village. On the morning that Kino is to sell the pearl, the other divers do not go out to dive this is to be a special day in the life of the town. There were once many pearl buyers bidding against one another, but now there "was only one pearl buyer with many hands," and the pearl buyers sitting and waiting for Kino already knew what each would offer for the Pearl of the World.
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This "organism" image is carried through and expanded to include the pearl buyers. Significantly, the entire town knows that Kino is going to sell his pearl today. In this chapter, Kino will step out of the known and trusted pattern of behavior he will no longer be a part of the larger organism as such, he will be more vulnerable to the enemy since he does not have the collective protection of the entire organism. Only when one person deviates from the general pattern of the rest of the unit is there a significant change. Here again, Steinbeck begins this chapter by comparing the town to a larger unit, or organism, in which no single action is separate from any other.
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It was noted that the town was very much like a type of organism in the last chapter.